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It’s been quite a while since we last posted…about 9 months? Woops. I’ll offer no excuses for my absence because life happens, school happens and things not as important as school gets pushed aside and placed on the back burner. That’s exactly what happened to this blog.

Now that I’m done with my undergraduate degree and currently on summer break before graduate school starts up I’ve decided to re-start this blog. This is partially because I’ve been reading again and finding awesome books and have been wanting to write about them. I’m also still at the library and keep finding books with pretty covers and need somewhere to be showcased.

With that being said, this is what you can expect from this blog: hauls, reviews, questionnaires/tags, Friday Reads and any other posts that I can think of. Hope you guys stick around and catch you at the next post.

Thanks to Civic Holiday in Canada, this past week was a short one. It has been, however, one of the longest short weeks that happened in a while. Usually they just fly by but not this time. This week kept on dragging on. Thankfully though it is finally Friday (a.k.a Fri-yay). Time to get my reading on!

This weekend I will be reading:

The Maze Runner by James Dashner. This is the weekend that I determine if I’m going to finish this book or if it’ll become a DNF. I’m more than halfway through and it’s dragging and I can’t seem to get into it.

Dare Me by Megan Abbott. It’s the first of 4 books I’ve taken out from the library and it needs to be read A.S.A.P before I need to return it.

I love my job, I do. I love working with my co-workers (both young and old), the customers that come on a regular basis and of course seeing/reading all of the books that come in through the book return slot.

Hold up.

There’s a problem to all of this though. On a single day I can work with 200 books, easy. Another problem is that I have very little self-control and will when it comes to controlling the impulses of wanting to check out many books that are new and that peak my interest.

You follow?

So today I bring you a book haul. Most of it is courtesy from the library, and one I actually bought with my own money. I probably won’t even read most of them before the due date, or I’ll end up returning them late. Oh well. C’est la vie.

Suddenly Royal by Nichole Chase

Viscious by V.E. Schwab

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Confessions: The Murder of an Angel by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro

So a new year has come upon us, which means it’s a time for everyone to turn to a new page and start fresh. Myself, and this blog are no different. Before talking about the new goals, I wanted to take a moment and look back at the goals made this time last year and see if I actually completed them or not.

2015 Goals:

1. Read 40 books. This was a complete success! I completed 42 books in 2015. Therefore, I will be bumping up my reading goal this year. More on this later.

2. Read less popular books and more indie books. I think I can mark this goal as completed compared to 2014 where all of the books I read were well known and popular, 26% of the books had less than 1,000 ratings on Goodreads. Not too shabby.

3. Write more book reviews and, overall, write more blog posts. I think this goal was a success for the most part. There were a decent amount of posts written on both blogs during 2015. Although, this goal will definitely have to change in the new year. More to come later.

Alrighty, now onto the 2016. I’m going to divide them into bookish related goal and include a couple of personal ones as well.

Bookish Goals:

1. Read 45 books. This will be tough, but I am up for the challenge. Audiobooks and short books, here I come.

2. Write posts that I actually want to write about. This might need a bit of explanation. The past year, there were a few expectations I held in my mind. One of them being that book reviews needed to be a thing on my blog. Yet, I actually don’t like writing them. I would take weeks, sometimes months in a few cases, to write out reviews because there was no passion or excitement to write them. So this year, I am going to focus on writing posts that are quite the opposite and do get me excited and all riled up to write about. Book reviews might still be a thing, but they will be few and far between

3. Give some love to the older books at least 2 years old. Having read a bunch of blogs and videos on Youtube, tons of people talk exclusively about new releases yet never anything older. So I am hoping to read some older books, and slowly take myself away the new book hype.

4. Actually read the synopsis. Pretty much any book that I get from the library I, A) either have heard tons of things about and take the book out purely based on the fact that a large number of people have read it and B) Buy or borrow a book purely based on the cover. I glance at the synopsis but that’s it. My eyes make contact with words but nothing more than that. This needs to change, because I end up reading a bunch of *meh* books that once read, actually don’t appeal to me.

Personal Goals:

1. Takes those vitamins. Anyone else get in a routine of always taking their vitamins but one day ruins everything? Then no vitamins are taken for days on end. Or, in my case, months?

2. Get on the treadmill at least 15 minutes a day. It’s not that much to ask for, so hopefully this will be an easy goal to complete

3. Let it Go and do stuff *cue singing*. Jokes aside, as a person with social anxiety, fears of judgement and the inability to predict outcomes, the anxiety will sometimes limit myself from participating in social events or getting to know others. If only by a little bit, this needs to change because we only have one life.

There’s no one Pax Sullivan wants to run into less than Gemma Thornton. Back in high school, she revved his heart more than street racing. But she picked his clean-cut brother over him—only to accuse Blake of an unforgivable crime. Eventually the charges were dropped and Gemma left town, but the hard feelings lingered . . . along with Pax’s gnawing “what-ifs.” Seven years later, just as he quits the police force to open a racetrack, Gemma’s back—and their chemistry is more combustible than ever.

If it were up to her, Gemma would never lay eyes on another Sullivan. She hates them, and they hate her—even Pax, who just so happens to be fixing up her father’s B&B. But the more time she spends with the lean, hard-bodied ex-cop at the inn and on the track, the more Gemma sees that Pax is nothing like his brother. Despite their anguished history, she’s tempted to take their relationship into high gear . . . if she can face the past and risk her heart.

Books can often be associated with memories. Memories of where you were when you first heard of the book, memories of experiences of reading them and at times memories of friendships. The Time and Place book tag was created by Non Fic Books on Youtube as a way to share these stories. While she did say to pick 10, I don’t think I can pick that many; instead I’ll pick as many books as I can. Here we go!

Book 1: The Seventh Princess by Nick Sullivan

This book brings me back to my early elementary school years. During that time, teachers would bring us to the school library and let us take out 1 book for the month. While perusing the stacks, I found this gem. The synopsis sucked me in and I read it within one or two sittings, and it sucked me in. This was the first book that I read that I had absolutely loved and needed to talk about it with other people. And I did. I also loved it so much that I made a mini-pact with myself to read the book once a year, just because.

Book 2: Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

I feel like a lot of other people will have this on their list but I still wanted to tell my story of how I came out this book. It was late elementary school, probably grade 6 or 7. My friend who lived across the street from me was really into reading books as much as I did, she probably read even more. So, we took a trip to the local library looking through the young adult section. She came across Twlight. At the time, the premise didn’t sound that amazing to me. In fact, it kind of disgusted me and I vowed to her that I would read it. I mean, who wants to read a story where a centuries old vampire falls in love with an unsuspecting 18-year old girl? I sure didn’t.

So at the end of the day I took out some books and my friend did, then went our separate ways. Two days later, I kid you not, she comes knocking on my door, basically throwing this book at me. “Sam, you have to read this book! It is amazing! I know you don’t like vampires but you’ll love this!” I looked at it apprehensively and looked back at her. Uncovinced I took the book and probably replied along the lines of “okay….I don’t want to read it but if you say so…” It took me a week to read it and at the end of it. I was the one banging on her door, literally praising the book. The rest of my elementary and high school time was spent reading these books and discussing them with her.

Book 3: The House of Night series by P.C and Kristin Cast

I know I talked about this series in the post. But this series was such a big deal for my friends and I during late elementary school and early high school. Simply put, at the time this series was the shit. Everyone in my friends circle read it and raved about it. So much, that we would buy it for each other’s birthday or we would just sit during a recess or during lunch and just talk about it…or mostly admire how hot Erik was. He was quite dreamy to our 13-year old minds.

We were all so obsessed that when the authors did a book signing in our city, we all dressed up like the characters. All black and inscribed drawings on our foreheads that resembled the tattoos/markings the vampyres had in the series. Yes, we went hardcore.

Book 4: Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead.

This story takes us back to my mid-high school years. I had been at my job for about a year and was finally becoming comfortable with my co-workers enough to have decent conversations without making a fool out of myself. One day, my co-worker and I discussed our favourite books from our past and vampires were brought into the discussion. Turns out, my friend had recently read a vampire book that I had to read. She basically dragged me up a few flights of stairs (not really, but you get my point) and stuck out the Vampire Academy book in my face. That day she told me I had to drop it like it’s hot and read the book. A.S.A.P. and so I did. I think I finished the book within a day or two (even during school, which was a big deal for me at the time). I binged read the entire series, each ending with a lamenting to both my mother and co-worker about that cliffhanger and its associated feels. Each shift we worked together following my reading of the series were filled with talks of Rose, Dimitri, Adrian and all of the other characters. We loved the books so much that years later, after she quit the job to pursue her post-secondary schooling and I was going my own direction, we met up and watched Vampire Academy in the movie theatres. Our verdict: We were slightly disappointed and there was only one memorable scene.

Book 5: Fanfictions

Simply put, due to a variety of fanfics read on Wattpad throughout my high school and early university career, I have met a ton of cool people on the Internet. Every time the author updated a chapter we: freaked out, immediately read it, then proceeded to talk about it for a good couple of hours after the update.

Book 6: The Talented Saga by Sophie Davis.

I know I have talked about this series a ton on my previous blog, but this one is special to me. I promise it’ll be the last mention for awhile. I read this entire series, up to what had been released in a matter of a week. It was during my first year in university. To be honest, it wasn’t that great of a year, almost horrible. Schooling wise I was struggling to adapt from high school, primarily in how to write a paper (3 years later, that task has been somewhat overcome). I had severe doubts if I was smart enough or eloquent enough for university. Socially, it was a disaster. My best friend from high school dropped me like a piece of shit, and replaced me with an exact replica (a.k.a we were both die-hard One Direction fans) with no explanation and that was hard to cope with. During the early months of classes, I was somewhat friendly with the people on my residence floor. 2 months later, they decided to exclude me from everything. With paper thin walls, and the girls beside me basically being the HQ of the groups’ hangouts, I was in-tune to what was happening. I only really had 3 friends throughout the entirety of my first year.

December exams rolled around and I was socially isolated and (I don’t know if this was the right term for it) but a little bit depressed. Distaste and fakeness oozed out of every nook and cranny when I tried to talk to engage in somewhat conversation with anyone of the floormates. Except for the two people who were kind enough to give me their time of day to either do homework together, regardless if one person was trying to complete a super-complicated physics problem or if I was struggling to write a paper on the reasons why disease was rampant in ancient civilizations after the domestication of plants and specific animals (which didn’t turn out very well if you were wondering). Or we would, very rarely, go out for ice cream to the cafeteria after a long day, decompress and just chat.

Speaking of the caf, meals were excruciatingly hard. I would go from class to class then go to the cafeteria right afterwards for dinner. Too shy to eat dinner alone when pretty much everyone else in my rez and the surrounding ones were all laughing together having a good time, I would go to my room (where I didn’t have room-mates) and watched Youtube videos or read each and every night until the very early hours of the morning. At this time, I had just discovered BookTube (a sect of Youtubers that upload videos primarily on books). In one of those videos, a girl, who I can’t remember for the life of me, read the synopsis of Talented and I was intrigued. Intrigued enough that the next time I went home, I downloaded the book and brought the Kindle with me to school. In a continuing theme of the other books mentioned in this post, I quickly devoured this book as well. I loved Talia, Erik and the events that were going on. I binged read the rest of the series. Them being my only sanity in that first term of first year. One of the few escapes from the shit that had been going on. I looked forward every night to see what would happen to the characters as well as solving the oh-so many unanswered questions.

If you’re reading this, thank you Sophie Davis for writing that series. It helped, a lot.

With that, I think that’s where I’m going to end this. Do you have any specific memories associated with a book?

Sparks fly like snowflakes when a klutzy but gorgeous novice crosses skis with a hot resort owner in this tempting tie-in to New York Timesbestselling author Kristen Proby’s popular Love Under the Big Sky series!

Grace Douglas is on a practice run for her friend Cara Donovan’s bachelorette party ski weekend in Aspen. The problem is, despite living in rugged and picturesque Cunningham Falls, Montana, Grace is the clumsiest person ever born. To prepare for the trip, she is taking lessons at a local ski resort. She just prays that they have an ambulance on standby.

Sexy hotelier Jacob Berkley is ready to play ski instructor, but he quickly discovers that the best place on the mountain for Grace is in the lodge with a hot toddy. Her sense of humor and easy laugh quickly pull him in, and soon he’s determined to help her get off the bunny slope for a fun vacation with her friends. He just didn’t expect their steamy chemistry to trigger an avalanche of desire straight to his heart.

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In accordance to the FTC guidelines, any reviews posted on this blog were not paid for. All opinions are my own and are not influenced by money. None of the links posted on this website are affiliate links.